Finding A Four Letter Word
by Ayame Nekura
Summary: Her eyes belong to him, that's all that matters.


**A/N: **_This is just a short oneshot i wrote for Lily and Severus. I always thought about how the professors told Harry that he had his mother's eyes and how hard that must be for Severus to see Lily's eyes in James' face. So here's this, a little break from my longer fic. Thank you to Chie/Scompy and Shaniquwa, my betas. Hope you enjoy it. -Ayame_

**Disclaimer: _I do not own any of the brilliant imaginings of J.K. Rowling, she does, and we love her for it_**

**Finding a Four-Letter Word**

The first time he saw her she punched a hole into his world through which a million things poured. Things that were so unfamiliar they made his soul ache as they pressed against it in an effort to make room for more, more, more, always more. She was so bright he had to avert his eyes. He kept his head down, his long, lanky hair shielding his face; his eyes focused determinedly on the bubbling contents of his cauldron. Thinking this meant he was as serious about potions as she was, she opted to pair with him in class. She asked him if it was all right, but he couldn't find any words, not just to speak, no words anywhere. It was like they vanished clean off the face of the earth and when she was looking at him there was nothing but red. She was like Christmas in a beautiful girl: red scarf, red tie, bright, warm, light, all smiles and laughter. He knew she was red inside, too. He knew that the red inside her was impure and unclean but he was too, so it didn't matter.

They worked quietly side by side in class. They measured, chopped, diced, minced, grated, poured, stirred, and strained, all in silence. They only spoke when it was required for quiet incantations. He wasn't sure how she knew he had no words for her yet, but she did. It felt sometimes like she had no words for him either, all she had were her smiles. He would pass her scales or ingredients and she would meet his eyes before he could look away, and then she would smile. When she smiled he turned away, it was too beautiful. He didn't know what to do with beauty, he had always been without it; it had always been taken from him and broken. Like his father had broken his mother. When she smiled he felt lost, he felt joy but he also felt empty. Her smile reminded him that there was a hole somewhere in his chest, that there was something missing somehow. When she smiled he wanted to smile too and say something, anything. But there were no words because the only word there was for that smile was a four-letter word that was strangely absent in his life and unfamiliar. It was the word that should be settled comfortably in that hole inside his ribs, but it wasn't there. When she looked at him he felt its absence so acutely he wondered if he might hate her in some twisted way.

In time she learned to fill their silence with words that skipped like stones over the surface of things. Her smiles grew in brightness and in number; they lit up his world and began to banish the darkness that was so familiar to him. Slowly the hole in his chest became host to something she nurtured; a tiny red seed that grew in size with every one of her smiles, every brush of her fingertips as she reached for the mortar and pestle, every laugh that escaped her lips when he muttered something witty or sarcastic under his breath. No matter what it was, everything she did or said, it made the little red seed grow in size.

Afraid that his fellow Slytherins would somehow know what was growing within him he never spoke to her outside of class. He did his best to hide the fact that his eyes followed her everywhere, he scowled or sneered whenever anyone mentioned her.

But slowly she began to speak more and more, and he was lost. She would whisper clever little remarks to him during Potions lessons, she would mock their Professor, as she grew more and more confident in her potions work. He never met her eyes but he couldn't help but smile at her dry wit. She took his small quiet smiles as encouragement and began to talk to him more, everyday in fact. He found himself looking forward to Potions more than any other class, even Defense Against the Dark Arts where he was allowed rare opportunities to feel powerful and in control. Power didn't matter as long as she kept talking, as long as she was sitting next to him in class smiling at him. It went on for years, their quiet friendship. She did all the talking, but never minded his silence, she continued to sit with him in class and partner him every year.

Then one day it happened.

He was watching her mince their ingredients while their potion came to a slow boil. Her hand slipped and she let out a pretty little gasp as a thin red line of her dirty Muggle blood appeared across her finger. Red, always red, red like her scarf and her tie and her hair and her lips…but suddenly it didn't matter anymore. The red was beautiful, not dirty or wrong, because she was red…and she was beautiful. She dropped the knife with a clatter and cradled her hand as the thin red line blossomed and began to drip on their table. Without a second thought he took her hand in his.

"Here, let me." He said softly. Her eyes went wide at the sound of his voice; she had hardly ever heard him speak.

He brought her injured finger to his lips. Her hands smelled of spices, of mint, of vanilla, and they smelled of blood. They smelled beautiful. His tongue darted out and licked the blood and the pain from her finger, he heard her gasp again. Her blood tasted like copper, just like the blood that he had tasted in his own mouth after every one of his father's beatings. They tasted just the same, Pureblood, Halfblood, Mudblood; it was all the same. It didn't matter just as long as she smiled at him again.

He picked up his wand from the table and whispered a mild healing spell, the first spell he had ever learned. The red line disappeared and her hands were left pale and smooth. He looked up through his long black hair and met her eyes. They were wide with surprise, and they were green he realized. Her eyes were emerald green, like his scarf, like his tie. Just like the secret red seed he kept within his chest was hers, something inside her was his. He smiled, and she smiled back.

"Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

She nodded, "Yes, thank you Severus." They just looked at each other. Something had changed, but for once neither one of them had words. This time he fumbled to find them.

"I don't know why the Professor has us brew this potion anyway. Why not just use a bezoar?" he said, attempting to lighten the situation the way she always had, with lighthearted criticism and wit. Her face lit up just as he had hoped it would and suddenly he couldn't breathe.

"Why that's a wonderful idea! You're absolutely right! Let's write it down in your book!" she said excitedly. He dipped his face behind his hair to hide his blush just as he dipped his quill in ink and did just as she had said. He scrawled it out across the page of his textbook as she smiled at him with her red, red lips and her green, green eyes.

It became a daily ritual. Together they would come up with new and better ideas on how to improve their potions and when one of their experiments worked they would write it down in his textbook together. He would read over their notes again and again when he was alone. To him they were a sort of secret code, a hidden maze of symbols that only he could read. Each word held an image or a moment. The brush of her hand against his as she turned a page, the loose hair that slipped across her cheeks, the disappearance of the tip of her quill between her teeth as she frowned in thought, her laugh, her smile, her eyes. Her eyes were for him.

Slowly the red seed he had kept hidden within his ribs began to sprout and grow. It grew vines and leaves that reached slowly to every other part of him. He hardly knew when it had happened that every part of him had become hers. Then the red seed blossomed and he began to smile with her, laugh with her, he began to speak more often and with more confidence. They spent the whole class working while exchanging clever quips in whispers over their cauldron. He knew she could see the red that was growing within him, the seed, the vines, the blossoms, how could she not? He felt like everyone could see it.

But it didn't matter; none of it mattered. Just as long as she kept smiling, as long as she kept laughing. None of it mattered because her eyes were green like his scarf and his tie. None of it mattered because at least a part of her was his. As long as some small part of her was his, it was all right that his entirety had somehow become hers. Even if he never once uttered the four-letter word he had been searching for from the moment he first saw her, at least it was in the scrawled notes in his Potions book, in the smell of her hands, in the colour of her hair, her lips, her scarf, her tie, her blood, in her smile, in her voice, in her laugh, and always, always in her eyes. That could be enough, just that.


End file.
